TAMPA, Fla. — Bay area power companies are asking for millions of dollars to increase storm resiliency in the event of major storms and hurricanes across the state.

It’s an annual ask from companies that year-round are working to harden the power grid and update technologies used to keep the power on.

“To do the amount of work that's needed to keep the lights on during a storm, is something that requires time and attention 365 days a year,” said Ana Gibbs, spokesperson for Duke Energy.

Duke is among three major Florida power companies asking for additional funding to upgrade its system.

Duke is asking for $142.8 million in funding.

Tampa Electric says it needs $53.55 million.

Every 8 years, every power pole in the state needs to be inspected by its power company.

That means for Duke Energy, it inspects around 100,000 power poles every year, covering 4,500 line miles.

Power companies are also upgrading their grids and implanting “self-healing” technology.

It adds redundancy to the power grid, so if one line of transmutation goes down in a storm, the system can revert to a different line, effectively bypassing the power break until it can be repaired.

“The technology now exists where our grid can re-route around itself, around a tree that may have hit our line and reduce the number of customers that are impacted by an outage."

Duke Energy says self-healing technology helped save the company from as many as 250,000 individual power-outage events in 2021 and saved customers from 17 million minutes of power outages.

The last major storm that impacted Florida was Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Irma knocked out power to more than 6.7 million customers, more than 60% of the state.